Petroleum Products and Black Powder

[Don McDowell]

Part of it is right, finding enough water to get the oil out of shale is going to be tough.
Part of it about polluting the ground water is a goodly part bs, the oil shale in the Niobrara formation is 7000 ft below the aquafer. And they frac it with water, carbon dioxid and sand.
http://deq.state.wy.us/wqd/groundwater/ ... 12-09A.pdf

[mdeland]

What about a water pipe line from the upper Missouri river to a web hub in the shale formation area.
It could later be used for irrigation etc.
That bugger in itself would create a huge volume of jobs to help our economic recovery paid for and maintained buy the oil recovery and those who use it later for irrigation etc.

[Kenny Wasserburger]

Dan,
And all, what you guys do not realize is that the water is already there in the Niobrara, the oil is what we in the trade call<, "water driven" all that 5 barrels of water can be re-injected back into the formation. However make up, that what replaces the Oil can be fresh water.

This of course also has it's own set of Bug a boo's Problems if you will.

This is already being done in just about every oil formation in Wyoming, When in the past this was done we made another Problem, H2S. You end up with bugs, in the water when you co-mingle fresh with Produced Water. Chemical hands are worth their weight in gold when this problem needs addressed. The Field I used to pump out near Rozet had wells that could get bubbles of H2S in the area of 40,000 PPM.

We do have quite a few formations, The Leo and Dakota, These are the wells around home "the Ranch" where I was raised and grew up that, have bad H2S already as a natural byproduct of the oil. Both of these formations are Water Driven. Yet naturally have Huge amounts of H2S. Some wells at much at 25%.

Think about that for a moment, when just couple Hundred Parts per Million of this will Kill you!

Keep in mind that most of the Water in Our local oil wells is very salty and we have to re-inject it do to it being a danger for waterways and land on the surface.


KW
The Lunger

[Don McDowell]

Dan they are taking oil and gas from some of these Niobrara formation wells, and it's been said, that there's so much pressure in some of these they can't hardly shut them down.
The scariest thing on this Niobrara formation is the water use, if they try to use groundwater, there's going to be holy ned to pay on account of some of the underground aquifers are already in trouble and not recharging due to the prolonged drought that has blanketed the Rocky Mtn region.
They may be able to get some water from the NorthPlatte drainages due to the last couple of years of heavy snowfall and run off, and the large storage dams on the North Platte. The South Platte is going to run into troubles as it's already over allocated, and doesn't have the storage facilitiies in place.
Either way I'm betting Nebraska and most especially Kansas will rear up and start major court battles over water rights.... They usually do...

[Kenny Wasserburger]

Don,

When You are working with that Much Zone, such as you do in a Horizontal, you end up with some major Bottom Hole Pressures, Driving the Oil the gas and the water to surface. Indeed it can be a scary thing, BOP's are a must and they MUST WORK. Something BP sorta forgot about. Also a good cement job is a must and the right kind of Cement.

I remember a well I brought on in 1984 south of Gillette, we had a huge Christmas Tree on the well head for Production, I opened the Choke to 12/64 of a Inch. It 18 mins I erroded and cut the choke out, subjecting the Inlet separator to 1800# of Pressure on the High side, It blew the sight glasses out and set the PRV's to screaming! It blew the lids open on the 1500 BBL Tanks on location. Shutting a certain group of valves brought the well shut in safe, that took about 7 mins. That well ran 1800 to 1900 on the Tubing string with over 4500# on the back side, the casing side.

It was a monster, made 3.5 Million Cubic feet a day and over 400 BBL of Condinsate. White gas.

What was cutting the choke out???? FRAC SAND.


I know its very popular to bash the hell out of Haliburtion, however the Deep Water Horizon event, would of been prevented if BP would of listened to Haliburtion when they told them they should use a much heavier Mud and The Right Cement. As an Anadarko employee I got to see the drilling stuff as we were a 25% interest in that well. Our own CEO blew the whistle on the Mud and Cement calling foul on BP. Our CEO kept us up to date with Emails each and every day as this played out.

Another fact: Haliburtion asked to remove their people 12 hours before the rig Blew, citting Safety issues they had no control over the drilling contractor, They were denied the Chopper, So they flew in one of their own and pulled them off the Rig.

If we jump big time into the Niobrara Play, I will have a pretty good part in the production end of it. I have all ready been asked to go back to oil. We are partners with EOG on a good many wells now.

IT wont be too bad as I will got to move much closer to home.

KW
The Lunger

[Don McDowell]

Kenny you're outfit and Eog are drilling the snot out of things from Grover to the Divide right now. They had one of those high pressure jobs blew out on Geortz's here a while back and nobody saw it over night. They had about 20 acres soaked in crude by the next morning. That's when some of the production numbers started coming out.
In the 80's they were punching gas wells north of Burns and got into a mess with the H2S and noplace to go with it, and I'm sure hoping those drillers know about that when they start punching holes there again.
The biggest problem we're having right now is all the knuckleheads ( I refer to them as the havenots) spreading alsorts of purtneart flatout lies about this drilling.Holding big "townhall" meetings and trying to scare the bejeebers out of everybody. Can you say PBRC and co?
From the research I've done to try and get some calmness on this deal (keep in mind I'm sworn to office to uphold defend etc, and am guided by statutes as to what we're supposed to be doing) the main problem and the major one is going to be the water to drill with, and then the fracing. I believe there's ways of getting it, but it's going to be a problem that won't be solved at any visible point in time. And I don't believe there's going to be any problems in keeping the underground water "safe" to drink.
The other is ongoing now with housing and infrastructure, and at least I don't have to deal to much with that unless a bunch of housing developements etc get started in our district, and that's not to much of a worry right now.
The bigger threat to everything and everybody as I see it are these damned windfarms. Until somebody can/ will explain why it's such a good idea to put them in here and run electric lines at the cost of 1 million bucks a mile to Vegas and LA, I'm staying pretty skeptical. Also waiting and will keep asking the hucksters on those things if any one of the damn things will ever produce the energy it took to build and install it? They alway just mumble crap under their breath and do their best to ignore ya..

[deerhuntsheatmeup]

Kenny,

Thanks for the explanation, just goes to show the different techniques used in different regions. I was H2S certified at one time, bad stuff for sure. Be careful.

Do you western oil patch hands use much 12 lb mud?

Best, Barvid

[Kelley O. Roos]

I was talking about shale oil in Co., it's mined.

I have no idea about this Niobrara field, it's been interesting reading what you are telllin us kenny and Don. Sand under pressure will cut the crap out of anything and fast, same as water will.

Kelley O.

[mdeland]

What is H2S, hydrogen sulfide?

[Don McDowell]

Kelley as near as I can tell this Niobrara formation is a shale formation that runs from about 7k to 12k feet below the surface. The oil and gas is trapped in vertical fishers in that shale.
So instead of drilling vertically and hitting the pool, they drill vertically to where they think they need to be , then turn the mud drill loose to punch holes thru those vertical pools.Then when they've got all the horizontal hole punched they think they need they frac the hole, opening up the vertical faults holding the oil and gas.
If they get it right they really get large amounts of oil and gas.

[Kenny Wasserburger]

Barvid,

I am no mud engineer but I read of 9 to 12.2# Mud being used in the drilling Logs. Last time I handled a set of tongs on a drilling rig was in 1979-80. And the last time I used power tongs on a work over rig was in 1984. I decided I liked Pumping much better! After a stint in the Wyoming Coal mines. I have a brother Mason and good friend of over 25 years that is a Mud engineer and Mud Logger, I will ask him the next time I see him. He is one of the best in our area.

Don is right we got lots of Greenies who do not know diddly, trying, like hell to scare folks. PRRC as Don mentioned are a group of people that want to shut down all energy production in our Area. Idiots. The PRRC is called the Powder River Resource Council.

As I told one person a few years ago, I am a earth first kinda guy, we will drill the rest of the planets later!

Its real hard to get Oil to crawl up 7000 feet to reach a water zone, that is cemented and Cased off and often a bridge plug and or Tubing to get past. If the stuff moved that Easy we would not have to use all the types of artificial lift systems to get the stuff to the surface

The real place you can contaminate water zones is in injection well running real high pressures and have a casing failure at the water zone. The state Oil and Gas and the WY DEQ require us to run integrity tests every few years on injection wells, for that very reason. I had to witness many of these such tests out at Rozet when I was pumping for Williams RMT, Ballard, Plains Production Barret Resources.

Of course you have to have several failures at the right places, casing at the water zone, your bridge plug has to fail and let your Injection come up to the water Zone. So 3 systems all have to fail for this to happen. And it is easy to see when it does pressures, on your Injection change a great deal. SO tubing must fail, bridge plugs, and casing and Cement.

I did see one injection well fail, yet it had not reached the Fox Hills where the casing and cement had failed, and a small hole was in the tubing. We ran a survey and shut the well in and ran new Tubing and Bridge plugs. Well was down about 2 weeks total maybe 3? This was a very old well drilled in the mid 60's.

I Love the Oil patch, it put me and my 2 brothers through school, bought pickups, feed our families, and payed for homes, rifles, campers, 4 wheelers, Divorces you name it.

Anadarko has been very very good to me the past few years, they bend over back-words to help me with my current health issues. I have benefits that are unreal based on merit and Years of experience, Good health care, Bonus that are unreal again based on Merit and performance. One of the things I love about the oil patch. Your paid what they perceive your worth and your vacation goes along with your level of experience. I have 7 weeks of Vacation a year alone!

As I have said before, no Union could ever of done that for me, if they had their hand in this a gallon of gas would be $10-$12 a gallon.

I am a level IV Lease operator, one of only 5 in the PRB with Anadarko. We do have one Level V that came as a V from Western Gas. However I make on avg a year more, due the very good Bonuses I get.

One time our, at that time Gillette Area Boss, asked me to explain my definition of Parts per Million of O2 and how hard it was to find to the Engineering group at a safety meeting. He and I had this visit a couple days before along with our Head of engineering for Anadarko.

I told them I am just a dumb Pumper but here goes my take on it." 10 Parts per million is OK, think of parts per million as inches, OK?? they both said OK. There are 63360 inches in a mile right? The engineer got out a calculator, yeah your right. I said OK, A million Inches is 15.78 miles roughly. So we are looking for 10 inches in 15.78 miles." Head engineer looks at me and says do not ever tell me your a dumb pumper ever again. That is so simple and makes too much sense, it's Genius.

That engineer is now the Head of the Rockies division, for Anadarko and at our last safety meeting, then the Xmass party asked me if he decides to jump us into the Niobrara play to operate ourselves, he is taking me with him. He also said, I know Williams wants you, Barret, and Ballard all have offers at times out to you. I asked him even with 1 lung and a port in my chest? His reply " I want whats in your head"

I am sticking with Anadarko.

KW
The Lunger
Level IV Lease Operator Anadarko Petroleum

PS Kelley yeah Frac sand is like sugar looks like it even.

Md you got it Hydrogen Sulfide, burning it makes sulfer dixoide. Poison!

[1minute]

Ran into natural vs petroleum arguments when I first started with muzzleloaders. I nNever understood the argument as petroleum was created by the same mother nature that fabricated bear grease, mutton fat, or bees wax. It's all organic.

[mdeland]

I'll try again, what leaves more residue behind petroleum products that will not readily emulsify with water or oils and waxes that will, when burned and mixed with BP fouling. Not trying to be a smart ass but using a comparison to make a more clear picture.
Burned axial grease leaves more residue than does Bees wax, lanolin, murphys oil soap, neetsfoot oil and a host of other oils and waxes that when burned readily mix with water and desolve. MD

[mdeland]

Or light and see! Is H2S flammable by itself?

[mdeland]

I bet that's the same crap that often comes out of volcanoes that is so poisonous in no magma eruptions. No?